Who's talking now? What others say about digital storytelling 2.0 app Heekya

David Adewumi & Heekya featured in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/10/AR2008081002026.html?hpid=sec-tech

Techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/05/launchbox-unleashes-its-first-nine-startups/#comment-2431710

" Our favorites are Heekya, JamLegend, and ShareMeme" 

Penn State Daily Collegian 

""For the last hundred years, stories have been a one-way broadcast," Adewumi said.

This is where he saw a need for a "social storytelling platform," he said.

He said Heekya adds "collaboration" and "depth" to the storytelling process."

"In a screencast on Heekya.com, Adewumi demonstrates how to tell a story on the site, using a wedding as an example.

"By telling their story on Heekya, Paul and Lindsay can share with their guests the complete story of their relationship, both by the time period that it happened and also by the location where the wedding took place," Adewumi said in the screencast, showcasing Heekya's use of Google Maps to map the location of a story.

"We have the idea at Heekya that a story may not belong to any one person," Adewumi continued in the screencast. "If you're at the same event with someone or found an interesting story, you can grab that story, copy it and tell your own unique story from your own vantage point."

Adewumi then described Heekya's user interface, saying media from different social sites such as Facebook and Webshots can be imported onto Heekya."

http://threeminds.organic.com/2008/08/will_social_storytelling_hit_t.html : 

Will "Social Storytelling" Hit The Mainstream?

This week Heekya launched an effort to attempt to bring "social storytelling" back to the mainstream. The site allows the web community as a whole to add multiple perspectives and content on the telling of a given story or event. Although currently in private "alpha", the video demo of the site gives you an idea of just how compelling such an effort, if successful, could be.

Mashable: http://mashable.com/2008/08/05/heeky/

Currently in private beta, a new service called Heekya is joining this larger development trend with a story creation tool that doesn't require direct social interaction but taps into the web community as a whole for the rendering of a given project ... a story can be recreated from several different vantage points, and distributed through multiple channels as a custom narrative by each person. Heekya seems rather simple to use, and its import and sharing capabilities will be key to its success"

VentureBeat: http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/07/take-a-closer-look-at-my-favorite-launchbox-digital-startups-plus-invites/

I like the way Heekya allows you to take someone else's story and create your own version of it, adding your multimedia and your perspective. So there could be a number of "stories" revolving around the same event, with a mix of shared and unique content.

GigaOm/NewTeeVee: http://newteevee.com/2008/08/07/heekya-wants-your-story/

In a nutshell, Heekya will be a way to aggregate all of your social media (Flickr photos, YouTube videos, blog entries) to tell a story. This could be a personal story, a fictional one, whatever. For instance, you could tell the story of your wedding by threading together pictures, videos and more, from the engagement (chapter 1) to the ceremony (chapter 2) to the honeymoon (chapter 3).

Duncan Riley (former Techcrunch writer)'s Inquisitr: http://www.inquisitr.com/2229/things-we-missed-regator-heekya/

We Media: http://wemedia.com/2008/08/07/12-weeks-nine-companies-seven-lessons-from-an-incubator-fund/

John McKinley's notes: http://greatfallsventures.wordpress.com/

The current model of story telling on the web is pretty fragmented. There are really good individual repositories out there (YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket are a few), but they focus primarily on a given category (photos, video), and have limited ability to address linear story telling. Blogging is a potential answer, but while there are close to 200 million blogs, only 600,000 posts occur each day - too many blogs die the slow death of neglect.

Heekya wants to encourage social story telling. They do this through several approaches.

First, they have a simple to use multi-media story builder that allows a story author to tap into their existing base of digital assets on Flickr, YouTube, PhotoBucket and Facebook. They also let the author use compelling public/shared content from those same sources. Good commenting and annotation tools help enhance the story, and simple sharing tools allow you to both share the story and post/embed it.

Second, they encourage alternate perspectives, allowing someone to clone a story and add or enhance it to create a linked, but unique story reflecting their own point of view.

Finally, they have a variety of browsing and discovery tools to let people see stories (and their related threads) along a variety of dimensions, including topic, geography, social connection, etc.

Storytelling Meets Social Media Part 3 

Interact2008 

"Heekya enables users to easily manage and share all of their digital media in the form of a dynamic ongoing story. Heekya offers a rather large set of features as it aims to create a database of social storytelling by creating multimedia slideshows with timelines and mapping features. "

The Next Web 

Valleywag 

SocialTimes 

"Heekya is trying to be the "Wikipedia for social story telling." The company's pitch is that "The current model of story telling on the web is pretty fragmented. There are really good individual asset repositories out there (YouTube, Flickr, and Photobucket are a few), but they focus primarily on a given category (photos, video), and have limited ability to address linear story telling. Blogging is a potential answer, but while there are close to 200 million blogs, only 600,000 posts occur each day - too many blogs die the slow death of neglect."

As such Heekya encourages social story telling through: a simple multi-media story builder, the enabling of story cloning and modification, and browsing and discovery tools. You can view more via the screencast below."

The Deal 

"A social networking site that focuses on enabling multi-media storytelling and incorporates pictures, videos and blogging. "

Viget Labs 

"Content and information on the web is fragmented. Sometimes it's separated by medium - videos on YouTube, photos on Flickr, etc. Almost always, content lives by itself with no connection to a greater story. Heekya is looking to connect content and provide context around stories. For example, they make it really easy to write up some text, drop in a picture or video and then link all that to a map so the reader knows where the story took place. Even better, they make content generation social. If someone else attended the same event that I did, I can clone their story and branch it off into my own narrative."